Are you seriously implying that having faith in journalists is a good thing?
Absolutely it is. Not blind faith of course but the importance of journalism and journalists to maintaining a free and fair society almost cannot be overstated. So yes I have a well justified faith (for lack of a better word) that journalists are by and large a good thing.
Skepticism is good. Faith is not.
Journalism IS skepticism provided it is permitted to do its job.
Are you seriously arguing that humans never cause accidents in those cities? HAHAHAHAHAH..... Humans cause thousands of accidents DAILY in these cities, most of which are due to incompetent driving. One of the primary motivations for self driving cars is precisely because humans have proven that they are quite bad at driving safely. Over 40,000 fatalities in car accidents a year in the US alone last year.
As expected the bulk of Waymo reports are rear end collisions when the car panic stops, probably for lens flare or some stupid figment of the car's imagination.
If you hit the car ahead of you then YOU are at fault for not maintaining assured clear distance ahead. The car ahead of you panic stopping for any reason should not matter at all and the driver that will be and should be cited is the one with the crumpled front bumper. Maintain enough distance between you and the car ahead of you and it's not a problem no matter what they do.
They panic stop for stupid reasons that other drivers have no reason to anticipate because no human would behave similarly.
Except that humans panic stop routinely for all sorts of reasons not obvious the car behind. And again, the fault is with the idiot behind the car stopping for making unjustified assumptions about the future actions of the driver (or bot) ahead of them.
There is nothing nearby due to current propulsion/distance limitations.
Currently true but so what? 100 years ago I could have said the same thing about traveling by air. Now I can be almost anywhere on the globe within 48 hours whereas 100 years ago the trip would have taken weeks if not months. I'm not about to bet against our ability to develop technology to get us to Mars and beyond. It won't happen overnight but I could easily see it being semi-routine within another 100 years.
We don't have any rationale for going to Mars right now except bragging rights and it would inevitably cost lives to achieve.
You could have made the same argument for crossing the Atlantic ocean 500 years ago. Here's the thing about exploring. You don't know what you are going to find so you cannot say that there is no rationale for going. We might find and incredibly valuable reason for going but the only way we will know that is to go and look. Yes it will cost lives but those lives will be volunteers who understand the risks they are taking. Exploration always comes with a body count and that HAS to be acceptable for us to progress as a society. The reliable airplane you board today was made so by brave people risking their lives in pursuit of larger goals.
What's the purpose now?
There are many to choose from. Pick the one that suits you. Protecting the species, economic gain, scientific curiosity, because it's there, protecting your tribe, advancing technology, etc. If you cannot find a purpose that matters to you, don't worry about it because other people have already found theirs. I don't have any interest in sailing across oceans myself but I'm grateful we have people who do.
If they still have the talent and facilities in Houston, leave them there.
Only if this results in the most economically effective outcome. If it makes economic or functional sense to have it elsewhere then move it where it needs to go. I that happens to be Houston that's fine but all reasonable options should be considered first. We definitely should not do what we did 50 years ago just because some well connected political leaders want to pander to their constituencies.
Say you shave 10 minutes a day by using a Mac. That's.17 hours at $38.27 per hour, or $6.38 per day. Taking that 49 weeks and assuming 5 days per week that's 245 work days... which totals up to $1563 a year saved. That should pretty much pay for the Mac by itself, especially if you consider a 3-5 year replacement cycle ($4689-$7816).
Full disclosure: I'm a certified accountant so I'm the guy you'd have to justify this to. I actually agree with you but I'm telling you what the counter argument will be.
The problem with your argument is that costs don't actually work like that in the real world. Minor savings tend to matter little because they are step functions from the company's perspective. Let me explain. Let's say for argument's sake buying a macbook will indeed shave the 10 minutes you propose. That isn't a cost savings to the company UNLESS it actually results in either additional billable revenue or a reduction in headcount. Either an increase in revenue or a decrease in costs. Reductions in head count are step functions because you cannot typically hire just 10 minutes of labor. You have to save the better part of 40 hours of labor per pay period for it to start to matter. 10 minutes "saved" for one employee doesn't change the bottom line of the company meaningfully. (not to say it isn't worth doing but we're trying to justify purchasing hardware here to bean counters) You have to have to have enough minutes saved to affect head count and that means you need to at minimum save tens of hours. Furthermore then the value of the productivity savings has to outweigh the extra cost of the hardware on top of the labor cost. So you would need dozens if not hundreds of macbooks under your scenario to actually result in a measurable change to the bottom line. Remember that the company can just ask you to work 10 minutes longer at the end of the day and if you are salaried there is no marginal cost to the company.
Alternatively you have to have some means of increasing billable revenue from the 10 minutes saved which simply isn't the case in most jobs. Will that 10 minutes saved result in extra sales? Maybe, but for most jobs you're going to have a REALLY hard time proving a causal relationship. And if you bill by the hour it actually could hurt the bottom line in the short run. You might be able to show how it will prevent you from missing a deadline or how it will keep staff from getting pissed off and leaving for greener pastures. For example my workstation at my desk has three monitors. Strictly speaking I'd have a hard time quantifying the productivity improvement but it keeps me from getting frustrated and I can show that I can get jobs done at least marginally quicker so the purchase got approved because if I'm slow in my particular job so is our cash flow.
In this scenario, the replacement broke in the same amount of time but in a different way.
I understand but you aren't going to go through that 24 more times nor is the company that sold you the product. Your calculation was correct but based on a faulty premise about how all the parties involved would behave.
Bingo. I'm trying to skip to that step by finding something other than a Chromebook that's warranted as fit for purpose the first time.
Fair enough but that's a different issue altogether. Nobody is going to bust out the proverbial (or literal) soldering iron if they truly need the warranty protection. More importantly if you need the warranty more than the modification then you didn't really need the modification in the first place. Modifying equipment that you cannot afford to lose is generally a poor idea. The nice thing about Chromebooks is precisely the fact that they are inexpensive so tinker with so it keeps the opportunity cost of losing one relatively modest.
If, say, the power jack breaks two weeks in, then I've paid $200 for a computer that lasted two weeks.
Right but if your goal is to do something different than what the manufacturer provides what do you gain by keeping it stock? You're basically buying something and not using it the way you want just in case of the (hopefully) unlikely chance a cheap piece of kit breaks. You're comparing apples to oranges. It sounds like you are not the sort of guy who would modify their hardware and that's fine but the economic case for that isn't relevant to someone who wants/needs to modify the gear. For them they simply accept the loss of warranty repairs as part of the deal and get on with it.
In the limiting case, that is an annualized price of $5,200 per year to own a computer. Does that qualify as "several thousand dollar piece of kit"?
No. I understand how you arrive at that figure but there is an implicit incorrect assumption in your calculation that any replacement would also break in the same way and in the same amount of time which is unlikely to be true. In reality you are just out $200 plus $200 for a replacement. Not ideal of course but not that bad either. Furthermore if you did break equipment at that sort of pace the company might replace it a few times under warranty but not 26 times. I guarantee the warranty gives them an out long before that happens. Hell you would probably get fed up and buy something else long before you actually were out of pocket even close to that much.
I become more comfortable swapping hardware once the warranty has actually expired.
Do you really care on a cheap Chromebook? If it's a several thousand dollar piece of kit and/or you are on a tight budget I get it but if you break a Chromebook, so what? That's the entire beauty of the hardware is that it's cheap and that you don't have to care so much of you break it.
Does anyone actually offer a 2 year warranty on a Chromebook? Given the price of them that would seem foolish of them since most PCs don't carry that long of a warranty. (honest question - I've never really looked)
This requires, among other things, opening the case and turning a screw. Does firmware replacement void the warranty on the screen, keyboard, power jack, and other parts in the Chromebook?
If you are the sort of person who is comfortable swapping hardware on your devices I doubt voiding warranties is high on your list of concerns.
Wait two months to see what the "low cost MacBook Air replacement" rumours are about.
Isn't "low cost macbook" an oxymoron?
Low cost and value are overlapping on a Venn diagram but are not the same thing. Macbooks are valuable to many people but it's hard to argue they are low cost unless you are merely talking relative cost to their even higher priced offerings. Conversely just because something is low cost doesn't mean it is valuable. Chromebooks are obviously inexpensive but since they don't solve any problems I currently have they aren't valuable to me.
Let's consider Adobe (and Photoshop). If Adobe wanted to port their industry-leading product to Linux, how do they do that?
They don't. The potential number of paying customers on the linux desktop platform in total is in most cases too small to justify the effort even if somehow they could mitigate the problem (and cost) of supporting the multitude of different distributions. I honestly wish more companies would support linux directly but I understand why they don't. There simply isn't enough profit to be had to make it worth the bother for them. I'm not sure there is an easy answer to this problem.
That's not to say every Linux user is unwilling to shell out the cost for a piece of software. But many won't.
The word you are looking for is "most", not "many", at least when it comes to desktop applications. The number of desktop linux users willing to pay for a traditional proprietary license is vanishingly small and as long as the applications people want (yes people do want non-OSS apps) aren't available that will remain the case. It's the old chicken vs egg problem. No apps because of no linux users and no linux users because of no apps. The fact that linux is ludicrously fragmented compared to Windows or OS X or even Android merely worsens the problem.
Bias is simple but Trump's behavior and dislike of unflattering news that results from it is a proven fact. Occam's razor only applies when it isn't clear what the answer is between two choices. While there are clearly a minority of news sources that are biased against (and for) Trump, many more are simply accurately relaying facts without any significant bias for or against. The fact that these facts make Trump look like an asshat is a second order effect. There is a reason his approval ratings are generally historically low - the majority of people don't approve of his actions and it should surprise no one that the news reflects that disapproval.
Trump behaves like asshat = news reports asshattery is a FAR simpler explanation than assuming widespread and universally negative bias against Trump by google and news organizations.
What astonishes me, though, is that for him works what didn't for the commie leaders of old: Saying that the media in the liberal west are just spreading lies.
It works (on some) because he's saying it to his tribe who are already predisposed to believe it is true. Trump is basically preaching to the choir. That's why his ratings have bottomed out - his supporters don't care what he says and everyone else knows he's full of shit.
I refuse to believe that Russians are smarter than Americans.
Hard to tell if electing Trump or Putin is the dumber move so you're probably right. Technically Trump lost the popular vote which makes it harder to pick a "winner".
Bias is simple, and doesn't require any conspiracy.
Just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean it is bias. Believing all news sources are biased against you is indistinguishable from believing in a conspiracy. The simple explanation here is just that Trump doesn't like news that isn't flattering to him and that there is a LOT of factual news that makes him objectively look bad. His own behavior is the simplest explanation, not bias. Some people like his behavior - many many more do not. Ergo a lot of of news isn't favorable to Trump.
It wasn't until fairly recently that USB-C supported alternate modes for audio and/or video.
USB-C is faster, delivers more power, is cheaper, and is more versatile than Lightning as things stand today. The historical reasons why Apple developed Lightning are irrelevant and the reasons they continue to use it have almost nothing to do with any technical advantages of Lightning (which are few) over USB-C.
Remembering this history explains why Apple adopted the Lightning port to begin with.
Apple introduced the Lightning port because A) micro-USB severely sucks as a physical connector, and B) Apple wants a proprietary connector that they can control and charge extra for and C) USB-C wasn't available at the time. Two of those reasons have disappeared since then so the only reason Apple is continuing with Lightning is because they control it and are making money from it. It provides essentially zero technical benefit to iPhone users and creates a lot of needless waste and an unnecessary extra cable type.
USB-C is great, and I like it a lot, but devices are already hitting limits on speed and power.
That has precisely nothing to do with Lightning which is slower and carries less power than USB-C. Of course device makers are using all of its speed and capabilities and if it had more no doubt they would use more. I'm sure the next generation of USB-C will do more than the current one. None of that is relevant to the discussion of why Apple should drop Lightning.
I'm thinking that maybe Apple should have put Lightning ports on the MacBooks to go with the USB-C so that they could share accessories with the iDevices.
That would be idiotic given that USB-C is already on the MacBooks. Just put USB-C on the iDevices. Lightning is no longer required and should go away.
This is why no one takes the social scientists seriously.
Maybe you don't but we base most of our regulatory policies on the social sciences so it's pretty safe to say they get taken quite seriously. And they should be because you want those topics studied in a scientific manner.
It is doubly why we shouldn't waste government research money and subsidized student loans on trite BS like this.
If you want to claim the money isn't being spent wisely or that there isn't enough scientific rigor in the research then I might not agree but at least it's a rational position to take that you might be able to defend. Saying we shouldn't have student loans for people studying economics or education or law or geography or anthropology is essentially saying we don't need those professions and shouldn't bother conducting research in them which is blatantly absurd.
Most of the crap peddled through the liberal arts isn't credible, reproducible, and is nothing more than make work for people who couldn't hack it elsewhere.
Mathematics and natural sciences are considered "liberal arts" and there is quite a lot of crap there too. See string theory for an example of a physics model that has had lots of money dumped in with a lot of useless, wrong and dead end results to show for it. There is nothing about the social sciences that is incompatible with conducting quality scientific inquiry. It's not clear to me why you seem to have such distaste for social sciences other than some vague dislike for subjects which are inherently messy and not easily reducible to nice neat formulas.
I'm not sure why we haven't seen a phone with no ports.
You will someday most likely. State of the art just hasn't gotten there yet. I'm pretty sure Apple is working towards zero ports and zero buttons as soon as they can manage it. I'm not convinced that's actually a good idea but it would be consistent with Apple's historical preferences.
There's way more people who us the headphone jack than those who use the USB/Lightning jack for actual computer connectivity.
Probably true. I haven't used my lighting cable to connect to a PC or Mac in years. Honestly I wish they'd just go USB-C since the lightning cable provides zero real benefit to me as a user other than being better than micro-USB (which sucks).
What YOU want is an upgrade to the SE. Personally I quite like the form factor and capabilities of the X and the SE screen is too small for my usage habits. The X is big enough without being too big. It's not perfect but it gets the big picture stuff mostly right by me. If you want something smaller and more basic I understand but please don't pretend what you or I want has any bearing on what other people want.
You know what would be a good idea? Knowing what well-regulated means
Agreed. You should learn.
The purpose of the second amendment was to eliminate the need for a standing military, since the authors of the 2a knew that a standing military was harmful to freedom.
A military isn't necessarily harmful to freedom and in fact is necessary to protect those freedoms we enjoy. Or weren't you listening every time we praise our military for "protecting our freedom"? It is rather ironic that the biggest supporters of gun rights are also in general the biggest proponents of a huge standing army though. Not sure what mental gymnastics you're going to invent to justify that.
No, you only think people who want to own guns should be enslaved.
Wow, that's one of the most profoundly stupid things I've seen written on slashdot in quite a while. Conscription = slavery? I think we're done here since you pretty clearly can't tell the difference.
Being that people were getting assaulted for wearing google glasses. There is still a lot of work for augmented reality that is needed.
AR does not require stupid looking glasses or headsets. Your smartphone will likely be your primary means of using AR. I already used it for astronomy, flight tracking (try flightradar24), street sign translation (google translate), navigation, and more. It's also likely going to become a big feature in cars in the coming years. Heads up displays, navigation aids, etc all can benefit from AR.
VR and AR are nearly the same technology, with the exception of a camera showing you the real world, and display overlapping it, vs. replacing it with something else
They overlap in some ways but no they are not the same technology. VR requires little to no awareness of actual physical location in space outside of a very confined and controlled location. AR requires no immersive world to populate with content. AR generally does not have issues with motion sickness. These are not trivial differences.
What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful?
Simulations (think flight simulators or other forms of training), certain games, porn, sales/marketing, architecture (virtual walkthroughs), and education are common market segments. Probably in some cases also remote operation. Most of these are sort of niche segments within a larger industry segment.
The main limitation of VR is that it's a cool technology but there just aren't a lot of use cases which are economically sensible in the real world. Simulation and virtual walkthroughs are where it historically has really shined. Gaming has become more of a thing lately as the technology has improved but it's only a fraction of a percent of the overall industry. Same with porn, marketing, etc.
There's a variety of very solid products out there and several very solid SDKs as well.
That's a "build it and they will come" argument. We could have an honest disagreement about how "solid" the products are but there is no argument that they have improved quite a lot. But just because the technology has advanced doesn't mean it will be adopted widely or that there are use cases people care about. Ask yourself what problem is this tech solving for people and then what are its advantages and disadvantages over the alternatives. VR is mostly a solution in search of a problem. Doesn't matter how solid the products or SDKs are if there isn't a real world use case that matters to a lot of people in the real world. It's got some utility in entertainment, a tiny bit in marketing, and a bit in high end simulations. Entertainment is probably the largest of these but even there it is a niche within the market.
What we are seeing currently is nothing at all like the toys of the past with games, big platforms, and even the bloody porn industry getting in on the action.
"Toys"? I was working with supercomputers costing 6 figures, CAVE systems, and 3D headsets as far back as 20 years ago. ALL of the things you mention were being worked on then and they certainly weren't toys. They simply didn't have much of a use case and still don't for the most part. VR gaming isn't likely to be a mainstream thing though it should be a viable market segment. And while I have no doubt that porn will likely become one of the major uses of VR, its still going to be a niche industry (most people don't need VR to get their rocks off to porn). Not to mention the problems with motion sickness which for quite a lot of people are impossible to prevent. VR is useful tech but there is way too much koolaid being consumed about how big its impact is going to be.
VR is smaller than AR in the same way that desktop home PCs are smaller than workplaces. You're conflating two very different target markets.
Conflating them? No. Not even a little. Yes the markets are different and that was my point. VR simply has FAR fewer viable use cases and the ones it does have mostly are smaller financial opportunities. VR is useful (and cool) but be realistic about what the actual market for it is.
In the consumer space VR is far larger than AR and so far have done a far better job at demonstrating adoption, and technological readiness.
The market opportunity in VR is not even CLOSE to being larger than AR, in the consumer space or business. Almost every smartphone and tablet made is getting AR technology built into it TODAY but you aren't going to see many people strapping them to their forehead any time soon. Even in gaming and porn AR has some seriously large opportunities (see Pokemon Go and similar) but AR is not nearly as limited in use cases. I've already used AR on my smartphone for astronomy, tracking airplanes, sign translation, virtual street signs, and games and I'm not even really pushing the envelope.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you seriously implying that having faith in journalists is a good thing?
Absolutely it is. Not blind faith of course but the importance of journalism and journalists to maintaining a free and fair society almost cannot be overstated. So yes I have a well justified faith (for lack of a better word) that journalists are by and large a good thing.
Skepticism is good. Faith is not.
Journalism IS skepticism provided it is permitted to do its job.
The humans have no problem in those cities.
Are you seriously arguing that humans never cause accidents in those cities? HAHAHAHAHAH..... Humans cause thousands of accidents DAILY in these cities, most of which are due to incompetent driving. One of the primary motivations for self driving cars is precisely because humans have proven that they are quite bad at driving safely. Over 40,000 fatalities in car accidents a year in the US alone last year.
As expected the bulk of Waymo reports are rear end collisions when the car panic stops, probably for lens flare or some stupid figment of the car's imagination.
If you hit the car ahead of you then YOU are at fault for not maintaining assured clear distance ahead. The car ahead of you panic stopping for any reason should not matter at all and the driver that will be and should be cited is the one with the crumpled front bumper. Maintain enough distance between you and the car ahead of you and it's not a problem no matter what they do.
They panic stop for stupid reasons that other drivers have no reason to anticipate because no human would behave similarly.
Except that humans panic stop routinely for all sorts of reasons not obvious the car behind. And again, the fault is with the idiot behind the car stopping for making unjustified assumptions about the future actions of the driver (or bot) ahead of them.
Or, talk to the DOD about building a US Space Force facility in Houston.
Ummm, there would need to be a "Space Force" first. There is no such entity currently regardless of whether or not there should be.
There is nothing nearby due to current propulsion/distance limitations.
Currently true but so what? 100 years ago I could have said the same thing about traveling by air. Now I can be almost anywhere on the globe within 48 hours whereas 100 years ago the trip would have taken weeks if not months. I'm not about to bet against our ability to develop technology to get us to Mars and beyond. It won't happen overnight but I could easily see it being semi-routine within another 100 years.
We don't have any rationale for going to Mars right now except bragging rights and it would inevitably cost lives to achieve.
You could have made the same argument for crossing the Atlantic ocean 500 years ago. Here's the thing about exploring. You don't know what you are going to find so you cannot say that there is no rationale for going. We might find and incredibly valuable reason for going but the only way we will know that is to go and look. Yes it will cost lives but those lives will be volunteers who understand the risks they are taking. Exploration always comes with a body count and that HAS to be acceptable for us to progress as a society. The reliable airplane you board today was made so by brave people risking their lives in pursuit of larger goals.
What's the purpose now?
There are many to choose from. Pick the one that suits you. Protecting the species, economic gain, scientific curiosity, because it's there, protecting your tribe, advancing technology, etc. If you cannot find a purpose that matters to you, don't worry about it because other people have already found theirs. I don't have any interest in sailing across oceans myself but I'm grateful we have people who do.
If they still have the talent and facilities in Houston, leave them there.
Only if this results in the most economically effective outcome. If it makes economic or functional sense to have it elsewhere then move it where it needs to go. I that happens to be Houston that's fine but all reasonable options should be considered first. We definitely should not do what we did 50 years ago just because some well connected political leaders want to pander to their constituencies.
Say you shave 10 minutes a day by using a Mac. That's .17 hours at $38.27 per hour, or $6.38 per day. Taking that 49 weeks and assuming 5 days per week that's 245 work days... which totals up to $1563 a year saved. That should pretty much pay for the Mac by itself, especially if you consider a 3-5 year replacement cycle ($4689-$7816).
Full disclosure: I'm a certified accountant so I'm the guy you'd have to justify this to. I actually agree with you but I'm telling you what the counter argument will be.
The problem with your argument is that costs don't actually work like that in the real world. Minor savings tend to matter little because they are step functions from the company's perspective. Let me explain. Let's say for argument's sake buying a macbook will indeed shave the 10 minutes you propose. That isn't a cost savings to the company UNLESS it actually results in either additional billable revenue or a reduction in headcount. Either an increase in revenue or a decrease in costs. Reductions in head count are step functions because you cannot typically hire just 10 minutes of labor. You have to save the better part of 40 hours of labor per pay period for it to start to matter. 10 minutes "saved" for one employee doesn't change the bottom line of the company meaningfully. (not to say it isn't worth doing but we're trying to justify purchasing hardware here to bean counters) You have to have to have enough minutes saved to affect head count and that means you need to at minimum save tens of hours. Furthermore then the value of the productivity savings has to outweigh the extra cost of the hardware on top of the labor cost. So you would need dozens if not hundreds of macbooks under your scenario to actually result in a measurable change to the bottom line. Remember that the company can just ask you to work 10 minutes longer at the end of the day and if you are salaried there is no marginal cost to the company.
Alternatively you have to have some means of increasing billable revenue from the 10 minutes saved which simply isn't the case in most jobs. Will that 10 minutes saved result in extra sales? Maybe, but for most jobs you're going to have a REALLY hard time proving a causal relationship. And if you bill by the hour it actually could hurt the bottom line in the short run. You might be able to show how it will prevent you from missing a deadline or how it will keep staff from getting pissed off and leaving for greener pastures. For example my workstation at my desk has three monitors. Strictly speaking I'd have a hard time quantifying the productivity improvement but it keeps me from getting frustrated and I can show that I can get jobs done at least marginally quicker so the purchase got approved because if I'm slow in my particular job so is our cash flow.
In this scenario, the replacement broke in the same amount of time but in a different way.
I understand but you aren't going to go through that 24 more times nor is the company that sold you the product. Your calculation was correct but based on a faulty premise about how all the parties involved would behave.
Bingo. I'm trying to skip to that step by finding something other than a Chromebook that's warranted as fit for purpose the first time.
Fair enough but that's a different issue altogether. Nobody is going to bust out the proverbial (or literal) soldering iron if they truly need the warranty protection. More importantly if you need the warranty more than the modification then you didn't really need the modification in the first place. Modifying equipment that you cannot afford to lose is generally a poor idea. The nice thing about Chromebooks is precisely the fact that they are inexpensive so tinker with so it keeps the opportunity cost of losing one relatively modest.
If, say, the power jack breaks two weeks in, then I've paid $200 for a computer that lasted two weeks.
Right but if your goal is to do something different than what the manufacturer provides what do you gain by keeping it stock? You're basically buying something and not using it the way you want just in case of the (hopefully) unlikely chance a cheap piece of kit breaks. You're comparing apples to oranges. It sounds like you are not the sort of guy who would modify their hardware and that's fine but the economic case for that isn't relevant to someone who wants/needs to modify the gear. For them they simply accept the loss of warranty repairs as part of the deal and get on with it.
In the limiting case, that is an annualized price of $5,200 per year to own a computer. Does that qualify as "several thousand dollar piece of kit"?
No. I understand how you arrive at that figure but there is an implicit incorrect assumption in your calculation that any replacement would also break in the same way and in the same amount of time which is unlikely to be true. In reality you are just out $200 plus $200 for a replacement. Not ideal of course but not that bad either. Furthermore if you did break equipment at that sort of pace the company might replace it a few times under warranty but not 26 times. I guarantee the warranty gives them an out long before that happens. Hell you would probably get fed up and buy something else long before you actually were out of pocket even close to that much.
I become more comfortable swapping hardware once the warranty has actually expired.
Do you really care on a cheap Chromebook? If it's a several thousand dollar piece of kit and/or you are on a tight budget I get it but if you break a Chromebook, so what? That's the entire beauty of the hardware is that it's cheap and that you don't have to care so much of you break it.
Does anyone actually offer a 2 year warranty on a Chromebook? Given the price of them that would seem foolish of them since most PCs don't carry that long of a warranty. (honest question - I've never really looked)
This requires, among other things, opening the case and turning a screw. Does firmware replacement void the warranty on the screen, keyboard, power jack, and other parts in the Chromebook?
If you are the sort of person who is comfortable swapping hardware on your devices I doubt voiding warranties is high on your list of concerns.
Wait two months to see what the "low cost MacBook Air replacement" rumours are about.
Isn't "low cost macbook" an oxymoron?
Low cost and value are overlapping on a Venn diagram but are not the same thing. Macbooks are valuable to many people but it's hard to argue they are low cost unless you are merely talking relative cost to their even higher priced offerings. Conversely just because something is low cost doesn't mean it is valuable. Chromebooks are obviously inexpensive but since they don't solve any problems I currently have they aren't valuable to me.
Let's consider Adobe (and Photoshop). If Adobe wanted to port their industry-leading product to Linux, how do they do that?
They don't. The potential number of paying customers on the linux desktop platform in total is in most cases too small to justify the effort even if somehow they could mitigate the problem (and cost) of supporting the multitude of different distributions. I honestly wish more companies would support linux directly but I understand why they don't. There simply isn't enough profit to be had to make it worth the bother for them. I'm not sure there is an easy answer to this problem.
That's not to say every Linux user is unwilling to shell out the cost for a piece of software. But many won't.
The word you are looking for is "most", not "many", at least when it comes to desktop applications. The number of desktop linux users willing to pay for a traditional proprietary license is vanishingly small and as long as the applications people want (yes people do want non-OSS apps) aren't available that will remain the case. It's the old chicken vs egg problem. No apps because of no linux users and no linux users because of no apps. The fact that linux is ludicrously fragmented compared to Windows or OS X or even Android merely worsens the problem.
All I said is: bias is simple.
Bias is simple but Trump's behavior and dislike of unflattering news that results from it is a proven fact. Occam's razor only applies when it isn't clear what the answer is between two choices. While there are clearly a minority of news sources that are biased against (and for) Trump, many more are simply accurately relaying facts without any significant bias for or against. The fact that these facts make Trump look like an asshat is a second order effect. There is a reason his approval ratings are generally historically low - the majority of people don't approve of his actions and it should surprise no one that the news reflects that disapproval.
Trump behaves like asshat = news reports asshattery is a FAR simpler explanation than assuming widespread and universally negative bias against Trump by google and news organizations.
What astonishes me, though, is that for him works what didn't for the commie leaders of old: Saying that the media in the liberal west are just spreading lies.
It works (on some) because he's saying it to his tribe who are already predisposed to believe it is true. Trump is basically preaching to the choir. That's why his ratings have bottomed out - his supporters don't care what he says and everyone else knows he's full of shit.
I refuse to believe that Russians are smarter than Americans.
Hard to tell if electing Trump or Putin is the dumber move so you're probably right. Technically Trump lost the popular vote which makes it harder to pick a "winner".
Bias is simple, and doesn't require any conspiracy.
Just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean it is bias. Believing all news sources are biased against you is indistinguishable from believing in a conspiracy. The simple explanation here is just that Trump doesn't like news that isn't flattering to him and that there is a LOT of factual news that makes him objectively look bad. His own behavior is the simplest explanation, not bias. Some people like his behavior - many many more do not. Ergo a lot of of news isn't favorable to Trump.
Did you know that the in-flight regulations governing cellphones are FCC rules, not FAA rules?
Some are but not all. Both the FCC and FAA have relevant regulations impacting use.
The last thing people want is some loud-mouth yakking next to them the whole time.
I sometimes get that even without cell phones...
It wasn't until fairly recently that USB-C supported alternate modes for audio and/or video.
USB-C is faster, delivers more power, is cheaper, and is more versatile than Lightning as things stand today. The historical reasons why Apple developed Lightning are irrelevant and the reasons they continue to use it have almost nothing to do with any technical advantages of Lightning (which are few) over USB-C.
Remembering this history explains why Apple adopted the Lightning port to begin with.
Apple introduced the Lightning port because A) micro-USB severely sucks as a physical connector, and B) Apple wants a proprietary connector that they can control and charge extra for and C) USB-C wasn't available at the time. Two of those reasons have disappeared since then so the only reason Apple is continuing with Lightning is because they control it and are making money from it. It provides essentially zero technical benefit to iPhone users and creates a lot of needless waste and an unnecessary extra cable type.
USB-C is great, and I like it a lot, but devices are already hitting limits on speed and power.
That has precisely nothing to do with Lightning which is slower and carries less power than USB-C. Of course device makers are using all of its speed and capabilities and if it had more no doubt they would use more. I'm sure the next generation of USB-C will do more than the current one. None of that is relevant to the discussion of why Apple should drop Lightning.
I'm thinking that maybe Apple should have put Lightning ports on the MacBooks to go with the USB-C so that they could share accessories with the iDevices.
That would be idiotic given that USB-C is already on the MacBooks. Just put USB-C on the iDevices. Lightning is no longer required and should go away.
This is why no one takes the social scientists seriously.
Maybe you don't but we base most of our regulatory policies on the social sciences so it's pretty safe to say they get taken quite seriously. And they should be because you want those topics studied in a scientific manner.
It is doubly why we shouldn't waste government research money and subsidized student loans on trite BS like this.
If you want to claim the money isn't being spent wisely or that there isn't enough scientific rigor in the research then I might not agree but at least it's a rational position to take that you might be able to defend. Saying we shouldn't have student loans for people studying economics or education or law or geography or anthropology is essentially saying we don't need those professions and shouldn't bother conducting research in them which is blatantly absurd.
Most of the crap peddled through the liberal arts isn't credible, reproducible, and is nothing more than make work for people who couldn't hack it elsewhere.
Mathematics and natural sciences are considered "liberal arts" and there is quite a lot of crap there too. See string theory for an example of a physics model that has had lots of money dumped in with a lot of useless, wrong and dead end results to show for it. There is nothing about the social sciences that is incompatible with conducting quality scientific inquiry. It's not clear to me why you seem to have such distaste for social sciences other than some vague dislike for subjects which are inherently messy and not easily reducible to nice neat formulas.
I'm not sure why we haven't seen a phone with no ports.
You will someday most likely. State of the art just hasn't gotten there yet. I'm pretty sure Apple is working towards zero ports and zero buttons as soon as they can manage it. I'm not convinced that's actually a good idea but it would be consistent with Apple's historical preferences.
There's way more people who us the headphone jack than those who use the USB/Lightning jack for actual computer connectivity.
Probably true. I haven't used my lighting cable to connect to a PC or Mac in years. Honestly I wish they'd just go USB-C since the lightning cable provides zero real benefit to me as a user other than being better than micro-USB (which sucks).
When what we really want is an upgrade to the SE.
What YOU want is an upgrade to the SE. Personally I quite like the form factor and capabilities of the X and the SE screen is too small for my usage habits. The X is big enough without being too big. It's not perfect but it gets the big picture stuff mostly right by me. If you want something smaller and more basic I understand but please don't pretend what you or I want has any bearing on what other people want.
You know what would be a good idea? Knowing what well-regulated means
Agreed. You should learn.
The purpose of the second amendment was to eliminate the need for a standing military, since the authors of the 2a knew that a standing military was harmful to freedom.
A military isn't necessarily harmful to freedom and in fact is necessary to protect those freedoms we enjoy. Or weren't you listening every time we praise our military for "protecting our freedom"? It is rather ironic that the biggest supporters of gun rights are also in general the biggest proponents of a huge standing army though. Not sure what mental gymnastics you're going to invent to justify that.
No, you only think people who want to own guns should be enslaved.
Wow, that's one of the most profoundly stupid things I've seen written on slashdot in quite a while. Conscription = slavery? I think we're done here since you pretty clearly can't tell the difference.
Being that people were getting assaulted for wearing google glasses. There is still a lot of work for augmented reality that is needed.
AR does not require stupid looking glasses or headsets. Your smartphone will likely be your primary means of using AR. I already used it for astronomy, flight tracking (try flightradar24), street sign translation (google translate), navigation, and more. It's also likely going to become a big feature in cars in the coming years. Heads up displays, navigation aids, etc all can benefit from AR.
VR and AR are nearly the same technology, with the exception of a camera showing you the real world, and display overlapping it, vs. replacing it with something else
They overlap in some ways but no they are not the same technology. VR requires little to no awareness of actual physical location in space outside of a very confined and controlled location. AR requires no immersive world to populate with content. AR generally does not have issues with motion sickness. These are not trivial differences.
What are some of the niches where VR is incredibly useful?
Simulations (think flight simulators or other forms of training), certain games, porn, sales/marketing, architecture (virtual walkthroughs), and education are common market segments. Probably in some cases also remote operation. Most of these are sort of niche segments within a larger industry segment.
The main limitation of VR is that it's a cool technology but there just aren't a lot of use cases which are economically sensible in the real world. Simulation and virtual walkthroughs are where it historically has really shined. Gaming has become more of a thing lately as the technology has improved but it's only a fraction of a percent of the overall industry. Same with porn, marketing, etc.
There's a variety of very solid products out there and several very solid SDKs as well.
That's a "build it and they will come" argument. We could have an honest disagreement about how "solid" the products are but there is no argument that they have improved quite a lot. But just because the technology has advanced doesn't mean it will be adopted widely or that there are use cases people care about. Ask yourself what problem is this tech solving for people and then what are its advantages and disadvantages over the alternatives. VR is mostly a solution in search of a problem. Doesn't matter how solid the products or SDKs are if there isn't a real world use case that matters to a lot of people in the real world. It's got some utility in entertainment, a tiny bit in marketing, and a bit in high end simulations. Entertainment is probably the largest of these but even there it is a niche within the market.
What we are seeing currently is nothing at all like the toys of the past with games, big platforms, and even the bloody porn industry getting in on the action.
"Toys"? I was working with supercomputers costing 6 figures, CAVE systems, and 3D headsets as far back as 20 years ago. ALL of the things you mention were being worked on then and they certainly weren't toys. They simply didn't have much of a use case and still don't for the most part. VR gaming isn't likely to be a mainstream thing though it should be a viable market segment. And while I have no doubt that porn will likely become one of the major uses of VR, its still going to be a niche industry (most people don't need VR to get their rocks off to porn). Not to mention the problems with motion sickness which for quite a lot of people are impossible to prevent. VR is useful tech but there is way too much koolaid being consumed about how big its impact is going to be.
VR is smaller than AR in the same way that desktop home PCs are smaller than workplaces. You're conflating two very different target markets.
Conflating them? No. Not even a little. Yes the markets are different and that was my point. VR simply has FAR fewer viable use cases and the ones it does have mostly are smaller financial opportunities. VR is useful (and cool) but be realistic about what the actual market for it is.
In the consumer space VR is far larger than AR and so far have done a far better job at demonstrating adoption, and technological readiness.
The market opportunity in VR is not even CLOSE to being larger than AR, in the consumer space or business. Almost every smartphone and tablet made is getting AR technology built into it TODAY but you aren't going to see many people strapping them to their forehead any time soon. Even in gaming and porn AR has some seriously large opportunities (see Pokemon Go and similar) but AR is not nearly as limited in use cases. I've already used AR on my smartphone for astronomy, tracking airplanes, sign translation, virtual street signs, and games and I'm not even really pushing the envelope.